Monday, June 20, after one of its main leaders for the first time openly apologized to ethnic Albanians "for the suffering" they endured during the Balkan war of the 1990’s. Father Sava Janjic from the Decani Monastery said the Serbian Orthodox Church was "genuinely sorry" for the years of war when Serb forces attacked ethnic Albanians.
"[We] understand the pain which many Albanians have gone through during the war in this region," the leading priest said in a statement released by local media and monitored by BosNewsLife News Center in Budapest.
He stressed he "regretted" that the Orthodox Church "had been unable to prevent the tragic events or change general politics of the [Slobodan Milosevic] regime at the time." Former President Milosevic is currently on trial at the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for alleged atrocities across the region.
MANY KILLED
At least 10-thousand ethnic Albanians are believed to have died during the 1998-1999 conflict in Kosovo, when they were seeking independence from Belgrade rule.
However Janjic also urged an "improved security" situation that would allow Serb refugees to return home. One-hundred-and-seventy-thousand Serbs initially fled Kosovo, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, after Serb forces left following 78 days of bombardments in 1999.
Janjic’s unprecedented statement came just days after the government of Serbia and Montenegro apologized for Europe’s worst massacre since World War Two in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where up to 8-thousand Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb forces in 1995.
PERSECUTION SERBS
His statement was believed to be an effort to end persecution of Serbian Orthodox Christians by revenge seeking ethnic Albanians. However his remarks did not mention reported persecution of other religious and ethnic minorities in Serbia.
Human rights group Forum 18 said that last year "an upsurge in attacks on religious minorities" was noticed in Serbia "ranging from slander and vilification in the media to physical attacks on places of worship and individuals."
It said such attacks continued "at a high level into this year". It added there were "more than 100 attacks on Protestant, Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness, Jewish, Muslim and Romanian Orthodox targets in 2004" and over "25 attacks between January and May" 2005.
RELIGIOUS MINORITIES
"Religious minorities complain the authorities are failing to take action to punish the perpetrators. Incidents range from an attack on a mosque in Presevo with a hand-held rocket launcher last February to graffiti "Death to Adventists" written on the walls of the Adventist theological college in Belgrade in March."
In addition "numerous Catholic graveyards have been desecrated, while the media constantly speak of Protestants, Old Calendarist Orthodox and Mormons as "dangerous sects," the group alleged.
An estimated 350-thousand Catholic and Protestant ethnic Hungarians in the province of Vojvodina are also suffering "atrocities", Hungary’s government says. Last week the heads of the Hungarian Catholic Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church held talks on these and other issues, urging "the need of reconciliation between peoples and respect for human rights" Hungarian News Agency MTI reported.
NEW COOPERATION?
Both Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo and Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle "stressed that the churches operating in the former communist states have great opportunities and major tasks to cope with in religious education, science and higher education," the Esztergom-Budapest Archdiocesan Office reportedly said.
Human rights watchers suggest however that despite the statements of reconciliation from Serbia’s Orthodox Church it will take time to heal the wounds between the different people of the Balkans, after a decade of bloodshed which claimed at least a quarter of a million lives and displaced millions. (With BosNewsLife Research and reports from Serbia and Montenegro)
